Monday, January 6, 2014

Crazy Storm

January 6, 2014

Dear Lacey Family,

Happy New Year! I can't believe that it is already 2014! I am looking forward to all of the good things that we will be able to do this year. This new year and christmas season was a little bit different.... I thought Uruguay was in a war for a second. Every time a firework went off we thought people were shooting them at our door, but when we looked outside they were shooting them in the air. They were the loudest fireworks I've ever heard!

I guess Chuy is a big tourist town so there are a ton of people here. The stores are jam packed with people from all over the world. It makes it difficult sometimes to find people that actually live here. But then again we have found some really good new investigators in the past couple of days so everything is good.

It sounds like everything is going really well up there though. I loved seeing all of the pictures of Christmas and everything. Looks like Luke got some pretty sweet stuff. I want to see that hovercraft in action! Hopefully when I get back Luke will be fluent in Ukelele too. I can't believe that you guys are already going back to school. That was a really short break! What are you going to be studying?

I got a lot of letters this week. the Berkleys, Grandma Larsen, Brother Norton from Alpine, The Brittney Harris Family, The Marcum Family, and Scott and Earlene Rhien. Be sure to thank all of them for me!

Well I am very grateful for this opportunity that I have to start off a new year down here in Uruguay. This past week was pretty hard because we had some investigators that fell through and it just didn't feel like anyone was progressing, but yesterday in Church we got rejuvenated again just through being able to take the sacrament and feel the spirit. Right now we have a good future ahead of us as far as our investigators go. Elder Rae and I are learning everyday and so we are both really excited for this upcoming year. One thing that I have learned these past couple days is that you can't worry about things that you can't control. One of those things that we can't control is other peoples agency. If we do everything that is possible to help an investigator come to church and feel the spirit and they don't come, we can't feel down on ourselves. Sometimes I get a little frustrated because there are people who feel the spirit and agree with everything we teach but then they won't do anything! I don't understand! But we have to respect everyones agency and so the only thing that we can do is drop some testimony on there heads.

This past week Elder Rae and I have had some crazy experiences. So we got caught outside in a storm again except this time we had our umbrellas....both of our umbrellas broke. I thought I was in a Hurricane! We were walking back from lunch in Brazil, on our left was daylight, on our right was a wall of black death. We had to run 3 kilometers to our house in a hurricane. I have never seen such a crazy storm. We were really protected because a ton of trees fell down, power lines fell down, and that tin roofing stuff was flying off of rooftops. It was pretty dangerous but we didn't feel scared at all. In fact, there was one point that I couldn't stop laughing because it felt like I was getting sprayed with a fire hose. I thought I was at 7 Peaks or something, so it was a pretty fun time.

Wish everyone a happy new year for me. I love all of you so much! All of my family supports me so much and I really appreciate it. I love the Mish!